Soane River, Monday, 6 October 2008

Cuautitlán  

buy neurontin online uk We left Chalon-sur-Soane about 9:45 AM, after we filled our water tanks, and executed a flawless maneuver to pull away from the dock.  We rounded Ile-St Laurent and headed back into the main Soane and headed downstream.  The skies were promising, the weather warmer than we have experienced so far. We were approaching Gigny-sur-Soane a little after 11:00 AM, since we had little head wind and the current really improved our mileage.  Carol and I took the helm most of the time, until we got into tight spots and Mike took over.  We reached our last commercial lock just before the noon hour, the lock gates were open (a boat headed upstream had just vacated the lock), our lights were green so we entered the lock and looped our bow line around a bollard.  Our stern was too far away to loop a line, so as the water dropped, Mike gave the boat some forward thrust to keep the stern against the lock wall.  Again we were the only boat in this huge lock – almost 200 to 300 meters long.  When we vacated the lock, there was a line of boats waiting to enter and head upstream.  We passed several commercial enterprises along the shore, coal, gravel, etc.  The 30 kilometer trip to Tournus was completed by 12:30 PM.  We tied up to the city dock, ate Shoe and Mike’s soup that had been cooked underway.  After we cleaned up we headed into the city center to check out the town.  Since it was Monday, everything was closed, but we did get to visit the abbey of St Philibert.  A rain shower forced back to our boat, where we spent the rest of the afternoon, listening to doo wop CD’s and watching as Mike roasted a chicken for dinner, along with garlic mashed potatoes, and haricot vert.  We are now down to two bottles of wine.  Naturally, it rained most of the night as the front moved through.

Tomorrow we will enter the Seille River to continue our journey to Branges.  The Seille
is where we will encounter our last three locks – all manual and to be operated by us!

This entry was posted in France, Soane River and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.